Prevention: Crime's Cure

Article excerpt

FLANKED by law enforcement officers and repeating the
30-year-old ritual of his predecessors, President Clinton has
launched yet another "get tough on crime" war against the wrong
enemy, on the wrong battlefield, with the wrong weapons. Missing is
any new vision of how to reduce and prevent violence, substance
abuse, and crime.

Putting 50,000 or even 100,000 more police officers on the
street will enlarge law enforcement agencies but not protect the
communities where crime and the fear of crime are rampant.

It is yet uncertain if community policing will help; the last
three decades have demonstrated that the primary prevention agents
are not the police but parents, educators, and health officials.

The Brady handgun bill and the ban on importing assault weapons
will have no important impact on reducing and preventing
gun-related violence. A five-day handgun waiting period is far less
effective than the instantaneous check system now implemented in
Illinois.

Today there are 200 million to 400 million privately owned
firearms in the United States, yet the US is the only industrial
nation with no effective handgun regulation.

This country requires a comprehensive strategy, including a ban
on the importation of all firearms, as well as prohibition of, or
taxation on, the manufacture and sale of specific weapons.

A strict weapons licensing system and consumer safety
regulations against unlocked and loaded weapons must be
implemented, along with a parental responsibility law for the use
of weapons by minors. Hospitals need a national firearm fatality
reporting system. Also needed are a massive weapons buy-back and
recycling plan; universal counseling for the perpetrators, victims,
and witnesses of life-threatening violence; and compensation for
gun-violence victims.

Finally, we must have a major initiative that redefines
attitudes toward guns in film and television; a consumer safety
warning against "war toys" and toy guns; a violence-prevention
curriculum in every school; and an appraisal of how US militarism
contributes to domestic attitudes toward guns, conflict, and
aggression.

Contrary to trends in every other industrial country, the US is
expanding capital punishment through unfunded federal mandates to
the states, even though the death penalty has no deterrent effect
and is three times more costly than life imprisonment without
parole. …